Wednesday February 4, 2009      A publicist friend just returned from a trip to India, and she had posted short notes all during the trip at www.twitter.com.  I sent  Kim a message that I adored reading her Twitter posts on her trip; that had she blogged about it, I would have enjoyed that, too.  Always the dilemma as a journalist, isn’t it: shall I experience this experience or record it for everyone else to experience through me?

Which gives the greater benefit, me enjoying the experience, or me recording the experience to share with others and enjoy later?

Which is more important to be able to accurately record and recall?  The words verbatim of a speaker, or the feeling that burst forth within me as I heard them, and the insights that came later as a result of them?

How much of the atmosphere and ambience is crucial to me arriving at an understanding of the event?  Thus how much of that do I need to share with the reader?  What will I be missing by taking detailed notes about the decor and seating arrangement, the nuances of the music or talk I hear?

This is a dilemma only because I choose to make it so.  Once again, it is only ever about my own perception and how I respond to it.

THE DOWNSIDE OF MY WORK BEING MY PLAY
Can there be a downside? Only if I think there is.  In the early 90’s, back in the beginning of Horizons Magazine, I began going to all the conferences and hearing all the big name speakers, Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, Abraham-Hicks, Marianne Williamson, Ram Dass.

I used to be a real note taker.  I always had a notebook and pen in my pocket, and would make note of everything I heard that struck a chord in me.  When I began going to so many conferences and events, I took massive notes, and that helped me to later report accurately what I’d heard and what I thought the speaker’s message was.

After a half dozen years of doing that, I began to feel burned out on the journalist/reporting aspect of the events.  I wanted to just go and attend and listen and not have to take notes.  After a few failed attempts at disciplining myself, the Universe decided to step in and make it easy for me.  A car accident in 2000 took my paws out of commission for several months and it took about a year to hold a pen or paintbrush again for any length of time.  So I ended up getting my wish – getting to attend and listen to speakers without having to take notes.

Then for several years I got burned out on going to conferences at all.  I’d been in the genre for so long that no one seemed to be saying anything new except Abraham-Hicks.  My problem wasn’t that there was nothing new on the scene, my problem was that I was forgetting that it took me 40 years to come to know what I know.  It took me that many years of soaking up study to really “get it.”  So it was easy for me to forget that although I may get tired of the 101 work, maybe everyone else needed to hear it over and over again, in a different way, from different speakers.  I sure did.

Now, years later, I have gotten over myself and am enjoying attending conferences once again.  Whether I’m listening or note taking, I am doing in the moment whatever I am meant to do.

And that’s always enough.